Strange Humanoid Encounters in Asia

Among all of the reports of strange beasts and entities from all over the world, surely some of the most interesting are those that involve various creatures that can only be described as being more or less humanoid in form. These come in a wide range of forms and frames, but are united in their description of something more or less basically human in appearance, only strange, warped or twisted somehow. Such reports are not confined to the West, and indeed many of the odder such accounts come to us from the lands of Asia, where there originate a myriad of reports detailing a plethora of humanoid apparitions that defy conventional understanding and propel themselves firmly into the lands of high strangeness. Here we will look at a selection of various bizarre humanoid creatures from Asia that run the gamut from the curious to the downright surreal and disturbing.

A rather bizarre flap of sightings of what appear to be strange, winged humanoid creatures occurred in the countries of Malaysia and Singapore in September of 2015, and were detailed on the site Cryptozoology News. In one report, a 27-year-old freelance journalist by the name of Lea Foo claimed that she was visiting an abandoned house on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, in a residential area known as Bukit Tunku, in order to do research on alleged hauntings there for a magazine on the paranormal when she came across something that was perhaps even weirder than ghosts. Foo reported that as she had walked through the spooky, dusty old house with only a flashlight to pierce the dank dimness, she heard a rustling sound emanating from one of the rooms and went to investigate. When she entered the room that was the source of the unidentified noise she was terrified to see two glowing red eyes peering at her from the darkness. Whatever the creature was then reared up to reveal a man-like shape covered with leathery skin and standing an estimated height of around 10-feet tall, which extended two large, bat-like wings before letting out an otherworldly shrill, screeching cry.

Foo was apparently so startled and frightened by the creature that she dropped her flashlight to send her into a heavy pitch black broken only by the two sinister glowing eyes hovering out in front of her, and she scrambled into a corner to try and hide from the menacing thing. As she huddled there she claims that she could hear the beast breathing heavily as it lurched about the room for a moment, perhaps looking for her, before issuing a flapping sound and gust of wind and disappearing. In its wake was left a horrific stench of rotting meat. Foo would say of the creature:

It had enormous wings, like the wings of a bat, but larger. It was extremely thin and sinewy and its eyes were human-shaped, but glowed red in light.

The creature in this case seems to bear a strong resemblance to similar beings sighted in nearby Singapore at around the same time. At the very end of August, 2015, a schoolteacher by the name of Fergus Thomas, 46, claimed that he had been walking his dog in a secluded wooded area which was once a royal palace known as Istana Woodneuk, when he came across something he could not explain. Thomas said that as he was passing by an abandoned house at around 6AM in the morning he just curiously looked into one of the windows, where he was startled to see some sort of “winged humanoid,” an estimated 6-feet tall, hanging from a doorframe within, its chest rising and falling as it breathed. The dog also apparently saw the creature and froze in its tracks, kept paralyzed there by perhaps fear. The teacher described the creature thus:

The wings were wrapped around its body, similar to a sleeping bat. It was black and had webbed wings similar to a bat. It had a human head but slightly more round and it had hair.

Thomas claimed that during the whole encounter the creature apparently did not notice him, and his dog remained completely silent, before they quickly hurried away before that changed. In the same week of this report a 19-year old university student named Mildred Wan also came forward with his own strange sighting. Wan was in eastern Singapore in an area known as Changi, which is home to an air and naval base, for the purpose of scouting an abandoned hospital there for a student film. At the time it was broad daylight and he did not need a flashlight as he rummaged about the interior of the creepy, decrepit old hospital, and that as he was leaving he noticed something quite frightening indeed; a winged humanoid up in a tree which let out a piercing shriek. He would say of the encounter:

I was walking out of the hospital doors having explored the surroundings. While I was inside, I had heard a noise which was similar to a large monkey rustling around the tree tops. As I left the building, I saw the creature. It appeared to be halfway up one of the trees with huge wings stretched out from its body, which appeared to be mostly human. I felt as if the creature was hunting me, or else was surprised to see me in its territory. It seemed to look in my direction before I ran off. When I turned around, it had completely disappeared.

The creature was described as being around 6 feet tall, with black, tough, leathery skin and a vaguely humanoid head possessing a mouth filled with sharp teeth. Although he had been carrying photographic equipment for his assignment, Wan had already packed it away and had been leaving the location when the abrupt sighting occurred, and so was unable to take any pictures. The encounter has stayed with him though, and he claims that it was the single most terrifying moment of his life.

The streak of such sightings continued with yet another sighting of the creature in Singapore that very same week, this time reported by a 54-year-old Alice Yimdale. She claims that she had been out birdwatching with her husband at an area called Dempsey Hill at around 2:30PM, but she would allegedly see something far more curious than just mere birds. As they hiked about the quiet wooded area they passed an abandoned building and heard from within a “loud fluttering noise,” which they decided to check out. Yimdale claims that as they approached they both saw a humanoid winged creature around 10-feet tall and with a thin body and huge, bat-like wings. The creature was reportedly barely moving and did not seem to notice them.

One more sighting of the humanoid creatures would be made in Singapore later in the month by Fergus Thomas, who had already made that previous sighting while walking his dog in the Istana Woodneuk area. Thomas claims that he had been so baffled and curious about what he had seen that he decided to go back to the same abandoned house to investigate. As he was there, he says he looked into the window of the house and saw what seems to have been two smaller, juvenile versions of the creature, which stood around 3-feet tall and had 4-foot wingspans. The creatures were described as sitting on the floor playing with sticks and rocks as if playing some sort of game. Thomas would explain:

They seemed to be ‘playing.’ It seemed like they were also attempting to fly, however it seemed they were not yet fully developed enough to have acquired this skill.

The fascinated teacher allegedly watched the creatures for around 3 minutes before hearing a shrill, “inhuman” screech in the distance that sent him packing. Oddly, the man did not bring a camera with him and claims to not own a cell phone. Interestingly, in all of these reports the witnesses mentioned the creatures they saw as looking like the Mothman, which was a winged humanoid beast with glowing eyes that supposedly terrorized Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the United States in the 1960s and was the subject of author and paranormal investigator John Keel’s famous 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. The Mothman is said to either be a harbinger of disasters or to actually cause them, and is most famously connected with the deadly collapse of the Silver Bridge, which spans the Ohio River in Point Pleasant, on December 15, 1967.

Mothman

If this was indeed the Mothman, as the witnesses claim, then it would not be the first time the creature or creatures would be seen in Asia. In 2011, in the days leading up to the deadly earthquake and massive tsunami in Fukushima, Japan, a witness named Marcus Pules claims to have made a sighting of what he describes as the Mothman in the area. Pules said that he had been in Japan on business in February of 2011, and had decided to stay with a friend who had long lived in Japan teaching English in the rural town of Okuma, in the Fukushima region. One day the two friends went out to look around the town, and in the evening they went to the seaside, walking along a trail that meandered near the Daiichi Fukushima nuclear power plant, at this point still in normal working condition, with no hint as to the major disaster and specter of doom it was to become. As they walked along, Pules claims that he heard a sudden “Whoosh,” which he at first took to be the sounds of the nearby ocean waves crashing against rocks, but his mind was changed when the sound repeated and then was followed by an ear piercing shriek the likes of which he had never heard before. His friend heard it as well, as did a couple who had been on the same path out for a romantic evening stroll. Pules would say:

We heard it again (the whooshing noise), followed by a ear pitching screech that shook me down to the bone and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. We looked around for the cause of the noise, when we heard the sound again. The best way I can describe it is a city bus’s brakes when they are in need of service, loud and ear splitting. We both continued to look around when my friend’s attention was drawn toward the plant by another nearby couple. A younger couple, out for a walk were staring toward the plant, arms outstretched and the obvious fear in their voices showing itself.

Pules then looked out towards the power plant looming in the distance and thought he could make out a large, shadowy figure silhouetted by the plant’s lights and the moonlight, which appeared to be sitting perched atop one of the buildings. As he stared at it trying to figure out who or what it could be, the figure suddenly unfurled what looked like a massive set of black wings and took to the sky, where it circled the plant several times. Pules described the frightening events that followed thus:

The creature then took flight and circled the plant at least 4-5 times, some circuits he took at a fast pace, some he seemed to slow down, all the while he kept his attention on the row of square shaped buildings that I later found out housed the reactors. The creature then came toward us, flying at least 25-30 feet off the ground. The younger couple who had noticed the creature first were now screaming and cowering, the man shielding the woman while shielding his head with a jacket. My friend and I looked in awe as this creature flew over us. That’s when I noticed the two large red eyes; they seemed to glow from within and with a blood red hue. They were unblinking in the 3-4 seconds we saw them, we knew they were looking straight at us, we knew this creature knew we could see it and it made no attempt to disguise itself. The sick, intense and overwhelming feeling of dread came over us. A feeling that we shouldn’t be there was to say the least, overwhelming.

Then the bizarre flying humanoid creature suddenly flew off towards town as the friend fumbled with his cell phone trying to take pictures of it, until it eventually faded away into the distance to leave the witnesses in a state of terrified confusion. Pules and his friend quickly vacated the area, and as soon as they got home the two panicked men talked about what they had seen, trying to come to grips with what it had been and settling on the explanation that it must have been a large bird or optical illusion caused by the lights of the plant, although they both knew deep down that this was not the case. Because of the dark conditions at the time, none of the pictures the friend had tried to take turned out well. In the following days they tried not to bring it up, and Pules would try to put the strange encounter out of his mind.

It was not until after he had returned to the States that he would be reminded of the creature once again, when the same friend woke him in the middle of the night in March, frantically talking about the huge earthquake that had just struck the area where he lived, practically leveling the town he was in. Pules turned on the TV and over the next few days was bombarded with images of the devastation that the earthquake and resultant tsunami had dealt out, including the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which happened to be the very same plant where they had seen the frightening winged humanoid. Pules would muse on the relationship between the disaster and what he had seen, saying:

Was it pure coincidence or was it the mythical Moth-Man doing his strange work of predicting disasters? I may never know and may go to the grave wondering that, but one thing is certain for sure, I don’t think that neither of us is going to forget this event, no matter how long we live.

Mothman and mysterious winged figures are not the only types of strange humanoids to have been encountered in Asia, and indeed Japan has more than a few a these accounts. One fairly recent account comes from November of 2015, from just outside of the beautiful and historical city of Kyoto. On November 30, 36-year-old Toriki Watanabe was in the process of driving from Tokyo to Kyoto to attend his brother’s wedding and decided to stop at a roadside shop situated in a rural, forested area. After getting some stuff at the shop, Watanabe then reportedly stepped outside to have a quiet cigarette. As he was smoking and taking in the view of the nearby forest, he claims that he spotted the figure of what appeared at first to be a man some 200 feet away and partially concealed by brush.

Watanabe says he called out to the shadowy figure but got no response. It was then that the thing began walking away and he could see that it did not move or walk like a human being. As it came out of the trees and brush that had been obscuring it, Watanabe was puzzled to see that it was a slouched over, humanoid being without clothing and standing around 6 feet in height, with a sinewy yet muscular frame, gray skin, and a “faint yellow or white light coming from behind it just around its lower back.” Although it is unclear just what Watanabe could have possibly seen, he himself seems to believe that he witnessed a mischievous creature from Japanese folklore called the shirime, which were said to be particularly active around Kyoto.

While the exact origins of this particular creature are unknowable, other strange humanoid reports from Japan seems to suggest creatures which can only be described as aliens, with one being of particular note due to its spooky, frightening nature. On February 23, 1975, two 7-year-old boys named Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata, were out roller skating in the early evening hours in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, when they claim that they saw in the sky a pair of luminous orange lights that flickered and made a strange “ticking sound.” As they looked on in amazement, one of the lights apparently moved off towards the distant mountains, while the other started to descend towards the ground nearby.

The boys claimed that they went off to investigate, and saw the craft come down to rest in a small vineyard behind an old, abandoned estate. The craft was described as being a domed disc around 15 feet in diameter and 7 feet high, which rested upon three ball-shaped legs. The surface of the strange object was silver-colored, and appeared to have characters or letters of some sort etched upon it. The loud ticking sound of the craft was very pronounced as they drew closer, sounding somewhat reminiscent of a geiger counter. As the two boys pondered what they were seeing, a hatch purportedly opened on the side out of nowhere and a ladder extended towards the ground, after which a strange looking being climbed out.

The creature stood around 4 feet tall, and was wearing a reflective silver suit of some sort. The being’s skin was allegedly a dark brown in color, and it was covered with thick wrinkles that were so pronounced as to make most of its facial features indiscernible, save for two pointed ears and prominent and intimidating 2-inch long silver fangs that jutted out from the folds of where its mouth might be. In its hands it held some sort of device whose purpose could not be fathomed but which looked somewhat like “a rifle.” Another of the creatures could be seen sitting within the craft huddled over some sort of flickering control panel. Whatever it was seemed to have completely ignored the two young boys standing there gawking at it as it proceeded to carefully examine the surrounding terrain. After a few moments of this it suddenly seemed to become aware of the boys, after which it approached them and patted one of the boys, Yamahata, twice on the shoulder while issuing a sound that sounded like “a tape recorder running backwards.”

Upon being tapped, Yamahata allegedly slumped to the ground and was unable to move, paralyzed by some inscrutable force. This pushed Kawano into action, and he quickly scooped his friend up onto his shoulders and ran from the area as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got home, Yamahata came to, and they supposedly told their parents what had happened, who would grudgingly follow the boys out to the estate outside to see the strange orange light climbing up into the sky for themselves. The light would then emit a burst of blinding light and vanish. Later, school officials would descend upon the area in daylight to examine the site, and would allegedly find two sturdy concrete posts that had been pushed over by some powerful force, as well as a ring pattern etched into the ground nearby. Authorities of the Civil Aviation Bureau of Transportation Ministry would later get wind of the story and dismiss the lights as merely from normal aircraft in the area. No word on what they thought the fanged humanoid could have been.

Strange encounters with humanoids are surprisingly plentiful in Japan, and indeed the country has one of the older such encounters on record. The time was the Edo period (1603-1867), during which the country had remained almost completely cut off and isolated from the rest of the world. On February 22, 1803, during the Tokagawa Shogunate, some fishermen off the northern shore of Japan came across a rather peculiar find. Out over the waves could be seen an odd looking boat of some sort that seemed to be drifting aimlessly towards shore. Curious, the fishermen steered their own boat towards the unknown craft as people began to gather on shore to see what was going on.

The fishermen were able to approach the strange “boat” and tow it to shore, where it would prove to be even more bizarre than anyone could have imagined. The 3 by 5 meter round, spherical vessel appeared to have an upper portion composed of what looked like bamboo wood that was smooth and covered with a layer of red paint or lacquer, while the lower part was made of what seemed to be a series of interlocking brass and iron plates. On the top of the strange boat were glass or crystal portals that were intersected by sturdy metal bars, apparently either to keep something out or keep something in. All things considered, this was a vessel of a design unlike anything anyone had ever seen, and the weirdness was only just beginning.

Peering into the windows, it could be seen that the interior was adorned with some sort of alien text or hieroglyphs which resembled symbols and shapes and was completely indecipherable to those present. Also within the boat were bottles of water, some carpeting, and what looked like meat and cake of some kind. As baffling as these all were, even more so was the occupant that could be seen ensconced within. There surrounded by these otherworldly geometric symbols and other items was a beautiful young woman of about 18 to 20 years of age, who had an unusual pink cast to her skin, red eyebrows, and long, snow white tendrils of hair that seemed to be extensions grafted onto her real hair, which was a striking red in color. The stranger was clothed in garments of a foreign design and made of unknown fabrics, and in her hands she clutched a small, square box to her chest in an almost protective manner. The boat was opened and the woman did not seem to be aggressive, although she would let no one near the box she held. Her language was unintelligible, making communication impossible. After a time, it was said that the woman courteously excused herself, climbed back into her bizarre vessel, which was being called the Utsuro-Bune, and went out to sea once more to disappear into the mists of time and historical oddity.

It is hard to figure out what we could be dealing with here, or whether it is all just fantastical myth, but it remains a rather intriguing case that we may never fully understand. Was this a foreigner from some faraway, unknown country? A visitor from some other time or dimension? An alien? Who knows? Another case of decidedly surreal humanoid beings seems to be rather firmly planted within the UFO phenomena. During the 1970s, the country of Malaysia experienced a series of encounters with minuscule humanoid creatures that never exceeded more than 6 inches in height, and which certainly have to be among the odder accounts of these phenomena out there.

On at least 9 separate occasions tiny UFOs typically measuring just 3 feet in diameter were seen all over Malaysia, typically in broad daylight, starting with a sighting made in 1970 by four boys on their way to school in Johore Bahru. They claimed that they sighted a small UFO with a group of 6-inch tall humanoids cavorting about it, but an investigation turned up only a small, burnt patch of ground that could have been anything. This was followed by a series of other similar reports, almost always by schoolchildren and always concerning creatures ranging from only 3 to 6 inches in height, often, but not always, witnessed to be in close proximity to, or disembarking from miniature UFOs. They were mostly described as looking like little humans with dark brown skin, as well as slightly proportionally larger eyes and heads and dressed in one-piece body suits of some sort. A few reports mention them having antenna like appendages sprouting from the head or carrying small devices that look like rifles.

On one occasion in 1973, two schoolboys near Kuantan even claimed to have actually captured one of the beings, which was apparently shown to a teacher before managing to escape. On another occasion some boys tried to catch one, only to be shot at by a beam of light from its craft, with one boy apparently having his arm paralyzed by the weapon. Most of these incidents occurred near school areas or rural fields, although one of the tiny craft apparently landed right in the middle of the Royal Malaysian Air Force Base at Kuantan. It is hard just what to make of such cases, and they certainly seem to be rather weird even by the standards of the UFO phenomena at large.

The realms of the strange seem to be populated by a vast menagerie of inexplicable creatures and mysterious beasts, and some of the most intriguing are the ones that come in the form of humanoids. This is a phenomena that transcends cultures and geographical boundaries to firmly implant itself into the domain of high strangeness, to the point that these entities seem to be almost a feature of the collective psyche, some archetype of the human mind embodied into the world of the real. What are we dealing with in such cases? Are these inter dimensional beings, aliens, cryptids, thought projections, ghosts, demons, or something else? Do they even exist at all outside of the human psyche? The answers remain murky. All that can be known is that such reports show no signs of diminishing, and this world is perhaps far stranger than we could ever imagine.

Brent Swancer is an author and crypto expert living in Japan. Biology, nature, and cryptozoology still remain Brent Swancer’s first intellectual loves. He's written articles for MU and Daily Grail and has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and Binnal of America.